1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a transducer, and more particularly to a transducer that dynamically converts electrical energy to acoustic energy.
2. Related Art
Audio speakers act as transducers that convert electrical energy in an audio signal to acoustic energy. Small audio speakers may be incorporated into mobile telephones, speaker phones, personal data assistants, and other devices. In some applications, these audio speakers need to adhere to a form factor meeting the generally rectangular shape of the device in which the audio speaker is installed.
Past rectangular audio speakers suffered from several drawbacks. Some designs omit the transducer membrane material at the corners. The omission of membrane material may form an acoustic short circuit that renders the audio speaker unable to accurately reproduce low frequencies.
In other designs, membrane material was rigidly attached at each corner. The resulting speaker suffered from membrane stiffening, with an accompanying increase in membrane resonance frequency. An audio speaker may produce nonlinear acoustic distortion effects at frequencies below the resonance frequency. Thus, some prior designs produced distorted sound over a wider range of frequencies.
A need exists for a transducer that overcomes some of these potential problems in the related art.